Using the Virtual Server User Interface

To create and edit virtual servers, you can use the user interface or a command line utility.

The user interface for administering virtual servers has three parts:

• The Server Manager contains settings that affect the server as a whole (or all virtual servers).

• The Class Manager contains settings that affect a single class and the virtual servers within the class.

• The Virtual Server Manager contains settings for an individual virtual server.

In addition, a user interface for end-users who have an individual virtual server is available. For more information, see Allowing Users to Monitor Individual Virtual Servers.

This section includes the following topics:

• The Class Manager

• The Virtual Server Manager

• Using Variables

• Dynamic Reconfiguration

The Class Manager

To access the Class Manager follow these steps

To access the Class Manager

1. From the Server Manager, click the Virtual Server Class Tab.

2. Click Manage Classes.

3. Choose a class and click Manage.

   You can also click the class name in the tree view of the server, or click the Class Manager button link in the upper right corner of the Server Manager.

The Virtual Server Manager

To access the Virtual Server Manager, follow these steps

To access the Virtual Server Manager

1. From the Class Manager, click the Virtual Server Tab.

2. Click Manage Virtual Servers.

3. Choose a virtual server, and click Manage.

   You can also click the virtual server name in the tree view of the server.

   You can use a command line utility, HttpServerAdmin, to perform the same virtual server tasks as you can perform using the user interface. For more information on the command line utility HttpServerAdmin, see Appendix A, Command Line Utilities.

Using Variables

You can use variables to give virtual-server specific values for a class without having to define each value individually. A variable is defined in the obj.conf file. You can define your own variables, but the user interface will not recognize them. The variable that is most useful in the user interface is the variable $id, which represents the ID of the virtual server. Whenever you enter this variable, the server substitutes the value for the individual virtual server ID.

There are a few other variables, such as $accesslog (the path to each virtual server’s access log) and $docroot (the path to each virtual server’s document root), that you may occasionally see, but $id is the only one you should need to enter into a field.

For more information on variables, see the Sun Java System Web Server 6.1 SP11 NSAPI Programmer’s Guide.

Dynamic Reconfiguration

Dynamic reconfiguration allows you to make configuration changes to a live web server without having to stop and restart the web server for the changes to take effect. You can dynamically change all configuration settings and attributes in server.xml and its associated files without restarting the server. So any changes that you make within the virtual server user interface can by applied without restarting the server. You can dynamically reconfigure your server after changes using the reconfiguration script or the user interface.

On UNIX platforms the dynamic reconfiguration script is a shell script named ’reconfig’ located in each instance’s directory. There are no commandline arguments to this script. You can run the reconfiguration script by simply typing ’reconfig’ from the server instance’s directory.

On Windows, the dynamic reconfiguration script is a batch file called ’reconfig.bat located in each instance’s directory. There are no command line arguments. You can run the reconfiguration script by simply typing ’reconfig’ or ’reconfig.bat’ from the server instance’s directory.

When run, this script initiates a dynamic reconfiguration of the server, similar to the user interface, and displays the server messages related to reconfiguration.

To access the dynamic reconfiguration screen, click the Apply link found in the upper right corner of the Server Manager, Class Manager, and Virtual Server Manager pages, then click the Load Configuration Files button on the Apply Changes page. If there are errors in installing the new configuration, the previous configuration is restored.